Beholding Bee (25 page)

Every so often she looks back at me to let me know I am doing everything just right.

111

One day when the lilacs are blooming outside Ruth Ellen’s front door and there are baby chicks in her chicken shed peep-peeping and the barn swallows are back for another year, I know it is time to find Pauline.

Ruth Ellen’s mama has planted early peas in the victory garden, and honeybees found the apple blossoms. Everything is reaching and stretching and growing, even Peabody. He is no longer a bag of bones and he has decided he likes napping with Ruth Ellen’s cat more than chasing her, at least when the sun is shining.

We are all sitting around Ruth Ellen’s kitchen table eating fried donuts and making our plan. I tell them how Ellis sent Pauline to his show in Poughkeepsie and she should be there now.

“But I thought you moved around all the time?” says Ruth Ellen. She is trying to find Poughkeepsie on the map.

“Our show moved. But Ellis was trying to keep the Poughkeepsie carnival in one place during show season—hire more singers and a flying trapeze and chimps and stuff like that—to attract more folks. That way he wouldn’t have to worry about getting enough gasoline.”

We look at how to get to New York. “Poughkeepsie is big,” says Ruth Ellen, bending closer to the map.

“Yes,” I say, knowing all about cities, because I think I have maybe seen the world.

On Saturday they pick me up in Ruth Ellen’s automobile. We hope that with their gas ration stamps and my leather envelope, we will be able to get to Poughkeepsie. Ruth Ellen’s mama has packed a picnic basket with peanut butter sandwiches and lemon squares. I think that is a nice touch. Pauline loves lemon squares.

Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Swift are half hidden behind the curtain. Mrs. Potter promised to give Cordelia plenty of corn and now she is holding Peabody up for me to see. I wave to them and hope everything will be just the same when I get back. I choke back tears and stare out the window until we turn a corner and the house disappears.

Part III

112

I do not tell anybody that Ellis keeps snakes under his hat. I don’t tell them about the smell of Beech-Nut on his breath, or the way he creeps up on you so quiet your heart freezes solid. If I told them, we would never get Pauline.

My legs are already wobbling and all I’m doing is sitting in the backseat of this green automobile between Ruth Ellen, who is reading ahead in
Heidi
, and Sammy, who has his
Captain America
comic book on his lap. I make myself breathe in and out, in and out, just like Pauline taught me. I am better at breathing now that I am better at running. I look out the window at all the houses and all the little victory gardens getting cleaned up and ready for another planting season.

We have to pass the road that leads to the cemetery and Francine’s house and I wonder if I will have to battle her again. I know Ellis is not the only wolf in the forest.

I breathe in and out, in and out, and just thinking about Ellis makes the warning light inside me go on and off, on and off.

113

The thing about traveling shows is you hear “The Farmer in the Dell” long before you see the rides. I have a headache before I get three feet out of the car.

“Woweeee,” says Sammy.

“This is it?” says Ruth Ellen, skip-hopping through the gate. “You lived at one of these?”

The warning light is going on and off inside me and it feels like I have a pound of butter stuck in my chest.

I nod and have to clear my throat over and over before I can get anything out. “See that long line of hauling trucks down there? Pauline and I lived in the back of one of those.”

“Woweeee,” says Sammy again. “Can we go on that?” He is pointing to the Ridee-O.

“No,” says Ruth Ellen’s mama, watching the wheel spin and the folks scream, and we see a different Theodore the Cripple getting looked at and some other Silas Meany keeps his eye on the ground in case any wallets go flying. I wonder about LaVerne, Big Ben, and Vivian and what happened to them.

I pull my hair tight over my face. Ruth Ellen’s mama notices. She does not know Ellis.

The first surprise is that Eldora is working the hot dog cart. She is chopping onions under a sign that says,
RATIONING
=
1 HOT DOG A PERSON. EAT ALL THE POPCORN YOU WANT
.

“Well, me oh my, is that you, little Bee? We were wondering what ever happened to you.” She throws down the knife and rushes out from under the tarp and gives me a big sloppy kiss and hugs me very close to her big self. I breathe an ocean of perfume. She brushes at my hair with her fingers because she was always jealous of my curls. I have to pull my hair tight over my diamond.

“Has Ellis seen you yet? He was madder than an old dog that you ran off like that. He looked for you, too.”

My knees shake and my legs wobble. I do not know if I have it in me to face Ellis again. I keep watching over my shoulder because I know wolves sneak up when you are not looking.

Eldora notices Ruth Ellen and her mama and Sammy. “You bringing her back?” she asks her mama.

“No.” I say it sharp because I do not want Eldora to get the wrong idea about me taking over the hot dog cart again.

“Too bad,” says Eldora, going back so she can turn the hot dogs. “I’m getting mighty tired of this, but Ellis didn’t think fortune-telling was making us enough money. My predictions kept going wrong. It’s hard to predict the future during a war, you know.”

I do not have time for this. “I need to find Pauline. Do you know where she is?”

Eldora laughs softly. “Well, I’ll be. You haven’t seen her yet? She’s resting in that last truck back there. Holy cow, won’t you be surprised when you see her.”

Resting? In the middle of the day? That doesn’t sound like Pauline. “Why isn’t she running the hot dog cart?”

“Go see for yourself.” A line is forming, and I have to
keep pulling on my hair and turning away because one mama and her two boys keep trying to have themselves a look.

Eldora goes back and turns her hot dogs. I look over at the hauling truck. And then before you can say Jack Sprat, I am running toward the truck and rushing up the ladder and climbing in the back of the truck and there is Pauline, just getting up from a nap, her hair all uncombed and flying all over the place, and then I am jumping in her arms. Only there’s not as much room as before on account of her belly being the size of a watermelon.

“Bee?” She whispers it in my ear like maybe she has forgot what I look like. “Bee?” And then she is crying and holding me, saying, “Oh, Bee, I didn’t know how I would ever find you. Ellis said you left, and I thought I lost you forever.”

And then the tears are rolling down my cheeks and I am home because she is wrapping her arms around me and we are together. The fit is not quite right, though, because of her belly, and I stand back and look at the size of it. Pauline looks at the floor of the truck. “I’m going to have a baby, Bee,” she whispers.

There is a bruise on Pauline’s cheek, dark as a rose at dusk. I reach up to touch it, but she winces, and turns her head away.

“He left me, Bee.” She reaches for me and sobs against my shoulder and I brace myself so I can steady her. There is another bruise on her arm and she is very thin in all the places where there is no baby growing. I hold her tighter, feel her shaking. I rub her back and say many soft things in her ear. I know all about being left.

“You were right, Bee,” says Pauline, hugging me so tight
again that I can hardly breathe. “Arthur said he was going to marry me. But he never did.”

I want to say, I told you, you silly, but I don’t. I look back at Ruth Ellen and her mama and Sammy. They have moved closer to peek inside. They are careful not to interrupt.

“The baby’s coming in June. Ellis isn’t going to keep me on, not with a baby. It’s not been a good year for him at all.”

“Oh,” I say, glad things aren’t going so well for Ellis.

“Did you come back to stay, Bee?” Pauline is looking all worn out. She drops onto the mattress, even with Ruth Ellen and everyone watching.

“No, Pauline,” I say, going over and sitting beside her, wondering how long it will take us to pack up her things. “I came to bring you home.”

114

We hurry out past a new kind of look-see booth, one I have never heard of before: Japanese Shrunken Head.

“Woweeee,” says Sammy. “Is it real?”

I shrug. A girl in pigtails and glasses and worn-through overalls stands inside a miniature circus tent with red, white, and blue American flags blowing on top. She holds up a shriveled head with its mouth sewed shut and a bone-and-feather necklace around its neck.

“Come on over and feel the shrunken head of a Japanese soldier captured by real live cannibal headhunters on the Philippine Islands. Come touch for a nickel. You’ll never forget Pearl Harbor.”

I feel pain in my heart just from looking. I grab Pauline’s hand. Ruth Ellen’s mama pulls Sammy away. “Bee, would you get us out of here, please?”

I walk us all toward the ticket booth, taking another glance around to see if there might be a Little Pig Race at this show and if maybe another Cordelia is here, and that is when I see Ellis over by the Tilt-A-Whirl, sniffing the air.

Pauline sees him, too, and tugs on my arm. “Bee, let’s go.”

Before we can get anywhere, though, Ellis sees me, and he rushes over, poking his finger out, straight at my face.

“Well, looky, looky, looky. Look who’s wandered in.” He
pulls his cowboy hat back, and I check to see if I can see the snakes under there. I can’t, although I think maybe his eyes are yellow.

A very large man sits stuffed inside the ticket booth. It is not Fat Man Sam, but it looks just like him. I pull my hair tight over my diamond. I pull my other arm across my chest. It is chilly in Poughkeepsie in early May.

Ellis’s eyes roll over Ruth Ellen’s brace. Her mama wraps her arm around Ruth Ellen and pulls Sammy close. Pauline is shaking like a leaf.

Ellis turns back to me. “You think you can just come back any time you want and work here? After you left me like that? Well, you’ve got another thing coming. I ought to …”

I am carrying Pauline’s suitcase, so he might be thinking I am coming back, rather than the truth of the matter. He steps closer and my legs wobble. I gulp in my breath and let Pauline lean against me. I pull my hair tighter over my diamond.

“It’s gotten bigger, hasn’t it?” He reaches for my hair but I turn away. He grins. I see sharp teeth. “You take a seat in the look-see booth and I’ll let bygones be bygones. Folks will pay a lot to see that diamond you got.”

Ruth Ellen’s mama sucks in her breath. “Now, see here,” she says.

Ellis turns quick to Ruth Ellen’s mama and pushes his hat. “Thanks for bringing her back, ma’am. She owes me a lot.”

“I’m not coming back.” I say it while I am trying to hold Pauline up. She is very heavy on account of the watermelon.

“You owe me money, sweetheart. You got to stay and work for me and pay it all back. Otherwise I’m calling the cops, saying you robbed me blind.”

Ruth Ellen’s mama pulls on Ruth Ellen and Sammy. “I think it’s time to go, Bee.”

“Oh, yes,” Ellis continues, “I took you on and let you stay here after your idiot mother and father got themselves killed. I could’ve dropped you off at an orphan house, but I didn’t, no siree. I kept you on, fed you, and put a roof over your head.”

I chew on what he is saying, about him keeping me on and putting a roof over my head, but it is all bad meat. I can feel Pauline shaking under her thin sweater.

“Bee, it’s time to go,
now
,” says Ruth Ellen’s mama. She takes me by the shoulder, but I push her hand off without taking my eyes off Ellis. “I’m not hiding anymore.” I say it strong, feeling a mountain begin to rise within me.

Ellis moves closer. He drools over my diamond. That’s the worst part, the drooling.

“I don’t owe you a nickel,” I say, backing up. “You kept me on so one day you could sell my diamond to whoever would look. And I don’t call a hauling truck a roof over my head.”

“You owe me money, you got to stay and work for me.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Ruth Ellen’s mama steps forward. “That’s it. Everyone to the car, now. You will leave us alone or I will call the police.” She grabs hold of Sammy’s shirt and nearly lifts him off the ground. But Sammy struggles and gets loose and points to the shrunken head. “Is it real?”

Ellis laughs. “Of course not. Is anything real around here?” He winks at me.

The mountain rises higher. Very slowly and carefully, I suck spit into my mouth. I whoosh it around, working up more, more, more, just like Bobby taught me. I gather a thick gob on the edge of my tongue and pucker my lips just as Ellis reaches for my diamond.

I step back, a girl eyeing a wolf.

He pulls his hat off so he can see me. I am surprised at his eyes. They are not yellow; they are thin and watery like he has the flu. There’s not a single snake under there.

I laugh inside myself. I am a lion, eyeing a mouse. I shoot the spit at the ground beside his feet.

“Don’t ever touch me again.” I say it sharp, my voice low and deep, and he must hear the mountain in my voice that he never heard before because he takes a step back.

I lift my chin. My diamond shines. I let the mountain rise higher and higher until it fills every part of me.

Then, slowly and carefully, I tuck my hair behind my ears. And I let Ellis have a good look at the girl he cannot have.

115

We all hurry Pauline as fast as she can go, rushing past Eldora and the merry-go-round and the Ferris wheel, and Ruth Ellen’s mama is telling Sammy how they will never visit another carnival again, not in her lifetime anyway.

My heart soars when I see a Little Pig Race and I have to stop for just a moment and go over and wouldn’t you know it, a little pig that looks an awful lot like Cordelia comes running over to get her backside scratched.

When we finally reach the automobile, Ruth Ellen and her mama and Sammy sit in the front seat so I can have Pauline to myself. It is a very nice place to be, both of us wrapped up like that. Pauline naps quite a bit and I try not to think too much about Ellis or about the watermelon between us.